-Image versus reality…
Greetings friends. I won’t completely avoid traffic fatalities, court decisions, murder, robbery, rape and local politics today. But, as hinted in my lead caption, my escapist emphasis herein is another look back to nostalgia of Guyanese ole-time August school holidays. They captured annual social phenomena that characterized a Guyanese identity filled with pure clean folklore activities and working-class fun. And some education.
Two up-front points for this repetitive bit of nostalgia: we over-sixty/seventy/eighty dudes around the world would recall hearing that someone – a little “slow” – went to school in August because in our time then, there was no “school” (open) during our long July-August school holidays. That fellow was then deemed – unkindly – not schooled, not “educated”. Secondly, the August extended respite for teachers meant challenges for parents and guardians of thousands of poor, innocent but contented youngsters not yet tainted by the progress and sins of modernity.
Over the past twenty-six years of the man-in-the-street column I have often mentioned my own school holidays growing-up in the Alberttown/Bourda/Queenstown portions of Georgetown – the simple innocent pleasures of the poor. I’ll refrain from personalisation today. But especially at August, now past 70, I seem obligated to recall the contributions of a powerful few who promoted the identity of our Guyanese society through the capture and explanation of our traditions. A sampling: Wordsworth McAndrew, Peter Kempadoo, Marc Matthews, Pauline Thomas, Laxhmi Kallicharran, Dave Martins, Mannie Hanniff, Ken Corsbie, The Calypsonians, Yoruba Singers, tassa drummers, Father Bennet, Basil Rodrigues, Desrey Fox, Ivan Forrester, Henry Rodney, Margaret Lawrence, Roy Brummel. Okay! Okay! I could never mention all in this limited space.
Frankly Speaking, August month still “provokes” me into quoting two other giants of nostalgia – the departed Godfrey Chin and Charles DeFlorimonte.
Poor youth, rich legacy
During the past fortnight I had reason to reminisce about Burnham’s first CARIFESTA (1972) as CARIFESTA 2019 looms; about Terry Holder’s all-round work in creative local broadcasting; about Vic Insanally – broadcaster/advertising executive and cultural enabler; about Harold Bascom – a fellow I met in 1971 who, to my mind, turned out to be one of our most multi-talented artists, musicians, playwrights, novelists and critics.
This is what August still does to me as I salute those who fashioned the Guyana image now under threat of being overwhelmed by Jamaican music, American accents and communication technology. (Should not some cultural development entity use that technology to preserve and promote our unique traditions?)
I edited the resuscitation of a literary tradition in 1998 – now known as the Guyana Annual and now more than one hundred years old. In that edition my late senior friend, journalist Charlie DeFlorimonte, in a piece of classic nostalgia titled “My Kitty of yesterday”, captured the joys of poor urban youth during the Augusts of the forties to the seventies.
Get hold of this gem to relive your youth. As all I’ll do here is give you two paragraphs of jumbled names for you to “decipher”: bucktops, chinks, cush, paperboats, spinners that “rake”, holes, woodguns, buckbeads, slingshots, bush cooks, canal swimming, “raiding” fruit trees, international boxing, athletics and cycle races, penny-buses.
Swank, mauby, pine drink, jackass collar, salara, square cake, sweet bread, buns, whiteye, bull stones, chester, coconut rolls, coconut biscuits, buss-rice and souse. Discuss with Guyanese under sixteen.
Tourism – knowing, loving Guyana
To inculcate a lifelong love for this land is to know it; visit, smell, touch and feel it. You’ll see its pristine ecological beauty. As well as its long-delayed developmental imperfections. Travel can cost the poor.
I dream of urban youth – Georgetown, Linden, New Amsterdam, Agricola, Rose Hall – visiting communities in Regions One, Seven, Eight and Nine. The hinterland of rivers, hills and mountain ranges, wonderful flora and fauna.
I beg some tourism authority to fashion and organise local tourism for parents and children during August. Participants may start contributing savings from July or January. Government should subsidise workers’ tours. Is such beyond us?
Bi-racial running mates, meaningless imagery
What oneness? What cohesion? What racial equality? What balanced ticket? Towards what grand purpose – politically?
Hi voters. Hello Guyanese. Hey electorate – tribal objective or independent. Have y’all ever noticed how the political parties contesting national elections “kill” themselves to ensure that their presidential candidate should be of one race and the prime ministerial running mate of another? Usually “Indian” and “African”? Just why is that some (necessary) conventional practice?
Do those mixed-race duos attract some harmony at election time? Thousands of the Prime Minister-Candidate’s group will support the presidential choice? Racial, political “cohesion”? Here? Did Sam Hinds, Mrs Harper, Dr Roopnaraine and Comrade Moses secure numerous votes for their “”presidents”? Who will Lenox Shuman’s running mate be? Oh it matters? Are we not great at fooling ourselves? Does image become reality? Discuss…
Just imagine, ponder…
1. This Tuesday marked 34 years since Forbes Burnham passed on. The tradition here is that you speak no ill of the dead. Does that hold for biographers, historians, objective analysts?
LFSB did a few things for me. He was indeed a Caribbean political visionary. He was transformative from the fifties colonialism to our independence (1966). But the memory of Forbes Burnham should be a complete one.
2. Registration takes in all 14-17 year olds. Are they allowed to vote? Stupid question?
3. Why was there a (costly) Commission of Inquiry into the Georgetown Municipality?
4. Do you realise that even well-intentioned commentaries on the race-issue here contributes to increased sensitivities at this time?
5. That naughty daily-letter-writer GHK Lall made me feel bad, diminished, when he wrote recently: “Limited minds may not be as exposed to such nuances”. Ow. Why “expose” me?
6. An earth-shattering national developmental event occurred some days ago! The CJI Airport just acquired baggage carts! Wow!
’Til next week!
